I Love Fairy Tales

Have I said that I love fairy tales? When I was little, I would go to sleep listening to records with dramatized fairy tales on them. We had 25 different records each with 2 stories on them. For years, we kids could expect to receive a new one on birthdays and Christmas. As we grew older, I continued to listen to them especially when I was having a hard time getting to sleep. I recorded some on tapes and took them with me to college. I could always count on them to help me relax if only because they reminded me of simpler times in my life. Now my two daughters listen to them every night as they go to sleep.

This papercut is from the story of Rapunzel. I always wondered why she asked the prince to bring her skeins of silk to weave a ladder from. Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just cut her braid and use that as a ladder to escape the tower just like everyone else? Perhaps Rapunzel had a little too much pride in her long tresses. Well, I guess she paid the price for her pride.

Romeo and Juliet

In honor of the upcoming valentines day. I cut my own version of the balcony scene of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". I really enjoy Shakespeare and love to see stage productions of his plays. "Romeo and Juliet", however, is not one of my favorites, but it does make a good romantic subject for a papercut.

One Last Pioneer

This cut represents all the young pioneers who crossed the western plains following their parents. The trek for them was often an adventure.

Another Pioneer

Here is another of the pioneer cuts that I have done for the presentation. These will be projected onto a large screen behind those telling the stories so that everyone can see them.

O Pioneer

For our Stake Women's Conference in February, the stake is doing a presentation on pioneers. Several people will be telling different pioneer stories, and I was asked to provide some illustrations to go along with the stories. Two of those are the portraits of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that I did last week. This papercut is another one. This is of no one specific just one of the many women who left everything behind to come out West and try to scratch out a living among the seagebrush because they believed the prophet. They were strong women, and I'm glad to have come from so many of them.

January ATC

Sometimes you have what you think is a great idea, but when you actually try to execute it, it just doesn't want to cooperate. This month's ATC was like that. The theme this month was winter blues. We could do any theme we wanted but had to use blue papers. It is hard to tell on the photo, but that dark paper is blue. I thought it would be appropriate for the month to do a sledding scene. I remember seeing a Christmas card that my dad had made over thirty years ago using a fake snow spray, and I thought it would be fun to do the same with my cards. Either I picked up the wrong stuff or spray snow has changed over the years because my spray snow didn't act the same way as what my dad used. It sprayed on just fine, and I liked the way it looked. However, the snow would not stay on the paper. If I touched it with my finger it came right off. The paper wouldn't glue to it either. It was frustrating because I liked the way the snow looked with the cutting. The only thing I could think of to do was to wrap the card up in clear contact paper. The contact paper didn't want to stick to the snow covered paper either, but everything was held together by folding the cantact paper around to the back side where it would stick. No doubt all the proponents of all acid-free products are now cringing. I'm sure that sometime in the near furture all my ATC cards will turn to some strange color because of all the slow torturous acidic things I just applied to them. Sometimes things just work out better than others.

Some Portraits

     This is my portrait of Joseph Smith. He was a man that I would have loved to have met. The world lost a great man when he was martyred.
    Here is a portrait of Brigham Young. I have always had a large amount of respect for him and all that he was able to accomplish. I had to guess some on his profile because I couldn't find any picture of him from the side.